A little TLC for the shop

The maintenance shop has been getting some needed TLC every winter.  Over the past several winters, we have installed insulation in the ceiling to help keep the warmth in during the winter and try to make it a little cooler in the summer. It still get over 90 degrees in the summer months.  We have repaired the roof so it stops raining inside.  We have upgraded the lighting so we can see what we are doing. and we ran air lines to the work benches.  This winter during the cold spell, we decided to paint the walls.  It probably has been over 20 years since anyone painted and you could tell!  We had to move a lot of equipment and parts to access the walls but it allowed us to go through and throw away a bunch of junk.  It feels real good walking into the shop and seeing everything have a place and how clean it is.  I always felt embarrassed when anyone would enter and I did not want anyone to think that we were unprofessional.  The shop now stands up to our standards and I believe everyone will feel the difference.  

Snow Fence

Due to our high winds everyday, winter desiccation is our arc eminences.  After the snow falls, keeping the snow in place is a daunting task.  For the past 6 years, we have been putting up snow fence to "trap" the snow in place.  The original use for snow fence is to keep snow from gathering on roads, highways, etc. by placing it 40-60 feet into the wind.  We use the same concept but to keep the snow in place covering our greens, tees and fairways.  This year we have installed 1.6 miles of snow fence.  As you can see in the pictures above, the fence has trapped the snow on the lower half of the fairway while the top half has blown off.  The snow is covering the turf, insulating it to decrease the chance of desiccation and over time with the sun, the snow melts, hydrating the turf below.

You got goats!?

Roxbourough Park used these goats for 2 1/2 weeks for fire mitigation.  The stayed on the hillside eating all the weeds and trees they could find.  They cut thru the golf course so they could be picked up for the next site they were visiting.  It was a pretty cool site to see on a Thursday. 

Course Update

I am sure everyone saw the dead turf on #9 green.  Our Toro triplex greens mower blew a hydraulic line on its third pass of the morning.  Having our employees trained, paid off big time on this incident.  Mike, one of our long time seasonal employees caught the leak quickly in the dark and backed up off the green instead of making a turn on the green to get off.  He then quickly drove thru the rough around the green and parked in the native grass.  We watched the spot (35 feet) for the next two weeks hoping the turf would survive.  On a slow morning, we stripped the dead spot as deep as the sod cutter could go and replaced the strip with the turf from our nursery.  By the spring, you will not even notice we had been there!

Greens aerification went... and went...and finally we finished 5 days later.  We used 1/2" quad tines at a 1x1x1 inch spacing.  There were 60 holes per square foot and by the end we punched roughly 8.4 million holes and used roughly 90 Tons of USGA sand.  We missed the spring aerification due to snow, so we needed to catch back up on the removal of the thatch.  The week we decided to punch, mother nature wanted to throw us a curve ball like she had done all summer. 
Monday: I started aerifying in the dark knowing what the weather was going to do.  The sun stayed behind the clouds, the wind was no existent (I only wish for the wind on greens aerification days) and we had the occasions rain shower.  We were able to aerify and pick up the plugs on greens 10 thru 18.  Unfortunately we were only able to drag in the sand on 10-15.  We need the sun and wind to help dry out the sand so we can drag it into the holes.
Tuesday: We called off our guys because the high for the day was to be 42 degrees with possible snow/rain.  We dragged in the sand on 16-18
Wednesday: We started 3 hours late due to frost/ice from yesterday evenings rain.  We finished aerifying and picking up plugs late in the evening but were only able to to drag in the sand on holes 1 thru 6.  This was the last day of the seasonal help and I think they were glad to be done.  
Thursday: We finished dragging in the sand on the last few holes and we continued to roll the greens with the True-Surface Vibratory rollers.
Friday: We rolled all the greens 3x to help with the smoothness
We put the first cut on the greens on the weekend with the sand reels.  We mowed all the greens 2 times with the sand reels and rolled everyday.  7 days later after the aerification date, we mowed the greens with the normal greens mower.  We rolled everyday the roller until it was picked up, since it was a demo.  20 days later, the greens are still healing.  Since we go so late in the year, the healing process is slow due to the average soil temps in the high 30's. We are still hoping the greens will heal up before the first true snow storm.  If not, we will baby them thru the winter so we can start off on the right foot in the spring. 
   

Fall Aerification Schedule

We are just about done with aerifying the tees, collars and approaches course wide. We aerified a few holes each morning so we did not impact your golfing experience. We aerified with 5/8" tines with a 2" spacing. We over seed each tee box and approach with a Perennial Ryegrass. We still need to finish #10 collar and approach and the combined tee box on #12/15. Our plan was to have them finished by the most recent rain storm so mother nature could water in the Ryegrass seed. We will start the deep tine process of the fairways and tees as soon as we diagnose the hydraulic pump issue with the tractor. Billy Miller, our Equipment Manager has been working very hard to get the tractor repaired. It is imperative that this is fixed correctly so we can deep tine the greens in mid October. The plan is to aerifier the greens on Monday and Tuesday, October 14th & 15th. We will keep you updated on any changes to the aerification schedule.

Course Conditions from most recent storms

The sun made it out yesterday for the first time in days. The course fared well from the rain storms. We received 3.86" of rain with most of it coming down nice and slow over the 4 days. We had a few rivers going down fairways at times and standing water in most bunkers. I have not seen this much rain since I lived in upstate NY. We pumped out bunkers everyday only to have them fill up within hours again. We only had a few minor wash outs. We were cart path only during the storm but we will be opening up the course today to carts. This week we will be mowing the course again to catch up from last week. We were only able to mow the rough, fairways and tees 1 time. It will take us the next few days to catch up, but playing conditions will return to the normal championship conditions. We are in the process of rebuilding all bunkers course wide. We will be re edging all bunker lips and redistributing all sand to the correct depths. Please be patient with the bunker repairs and maintenance and this is a slow and tedious process. We look forward to see you out there!

Course Signage

One of the main complaints from our guests that come and play golf at Arrowhead, is that there is no course signage.  Over the years, many of the fake rocks were damaged beyond repair making it very difficult to navigate the course. 
Ryan Vrooman, Assistant Superintendent, took this project under his wing.  This summer he installed 4 directional red rock on the course that stand about 4 feet tall.  He also installed a new front entrance rock that stands over 6 feet tall on the main road coming into the golf course.  He is in the process of installing another 5 directional rocks on the course this fall.  I have heard many compliments on the signage and how they have improved the pace of play.  We will "Keep Rockin" out there!